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What I am doing now

You are most likely here because you enjoy crafting. I have been reading up on some of the WoW issues regarding gold making, which make me realize that WoW is not the game for me.

If you want to play a game where gathering and crafting is the cornerstone of the economy, and are not faint of heart, I recommend EVE Online. EVE even has releases purely to support industry. You can play for free if you are good enough manufacturer or trader.

26 April 2012

My priest has two professions - inscription and engineering. In case you didn't guess, inscription got a workout. I took Engineering to fill out my set of professions - plus Jeeves and a mailbox is usefull. To date; I have not made much gold from this toon.

Mists of Pandaria has something for the engineer in my priest - the opportunity to sell pets. Pet battles will be 'fun'. I have read (can not remember where) that pets will be casual friendly. You will be encouraged to look at your wins - and will be discouraged from looking at your losses.

My young child that sneaks onto my PC and take my ilvl 390+ tank Elwyn Forrest so he can duel lowbies - and lose; He also still watches pokemon. He will love pet battles - and is part of the target audience.

I have not bothered much with engineering pets before but have found few articles worth looking at:

Over the next few months, I will be dedicating a stockpile to making pets and getting boe recipees.

Like all speculative posts, if everyone jumps onto the bandwagon, then we may end up with oversupply and a price crash. For my personal opinion - I would be reluctant to call it an upcoming petmass just yet, but I do expect a huge demand for pets.

24 April 2012

PC is back up and restored - woo hoo - or actually - a fair bit of time. I knew there was a reason I paid them to build my last PC.

I had not been on much during the week - and nearly missed out on a very successful gold bid run on Friday night. Scheduled start time to madness kill - 3.5 hours. Very nice for a pug; I have found that many of the richer toons also have done well at raiding.

I am bleeding gold on those things - so many purples to buy; though not for long. My tank is nearly normal best in slot and has a few (ugggh) DPS pieces. My priest still has a bit to buy. In case you didn't know - I don't DPS much. On a positive note for the blog, it at least gives me something to go and earn gold - and hence to have something to talk about.

If you are on Caelsetrasz Alliance, and wish to participate in 25 gold bid raiding, either leave a message here, or in game mail foofixit and I will pass your name onto the organizers. And yes - DPS are needed even more than tanks and healers (and I am a truly awful melee DPS ).

On a different note; for me; normal Madness is down - on my tank and my healer; still with mostly one night/week raiding (though I have put in a second night a 1/2 dozen times). This means that I am now looking at the next step - Heroic raiding.

Ideally - the gold bid runs will start some bosses on heroic soon - though I can well imaging the desire to spend a few more weeks farming Madness until the gold rich have the purples they want. (Yes I know the organizers read this blog - but that need not stop me from wishing.). Many (but not all) of my preferred comrades at arms are in the gold bid run, and they are still getting nice drops. Even I am happy to get a few more pieces.

That leaves the possibility of Saturday nights learning heroic modes. I have been advised to try Heroic Morchok, then Ultraxian; and that seems reasonable. If you need a 'destroyer' tank or healer on a (probably) Saturday night, or are interested in joining a group for the same - let me know - again either on this blog or via Caelestrasz Alliance - Foolich or Foofixit.

14 April 2012

Woo Hoo - I have Mists of Betadaria. I should be able to find something from this to post about.

Sad news. My PC crashed - again. Last time it was a power supply failure; this time it is a hard drive failure. Nothing says irritating like a PC deciding to reboot part way through the startup sequence when you are meant to be logging in for a raid.

Fortunately I had a second PC with WoW. It pulls 3 frames per second at the auction house - so it just might not be up to Ultraxian 25 man. It was also out of date and I had to install two separate patches. I did login and let a couple players know that I was unable to raid; and withdrew my acceptance of the (quite successful) 25 man gold bid runs.

For those of a technical mind: I installed Knoppix on a USB drive and used this to copy my files from my failed hard drive to another network drive (1/2 day); and am in the process of running a drive diagnostic (smartmon - another 3 hours). I will then reformat and re-install my windows installation.

05 April 2012

For the record, I am almost certain you will make a profit on bags for Mists of Pandaria. I am also certain I could make money from Engineering. If you are after a post to cater to your confirmation bias, then you may need to read another blog.

My biggest concern about bags is that we know bags will make gold, so the supply will outstrip the demand; and we won't make a copper coin. Of course I could be wrong, I have been before, and I will be again. But lets look at what we know, and can demonstrate.

Players will go from 10 toon slots/account/server to 11 toon slots in Mists

Bags need cloth

Cloth is traditionally farmed.

Cataclysm came out about 7 Dec 2010.

We have a price series of basic mats from WoW Midas. Please remember that there are statistical limitations to how far we can push this data, but some trends are very clear.

Now, assuming - as some comments do - bags will be huge sellers in the first days, and make us all a gold cap very early on: some things should happen.

Other tailors won't cotton on

Players will leave their bag buying to the last moment.

Players will want bags on their pandas as soon as they logon - all 11 bag slots.

Players will be able to put bags on their pandas as soon as they logon.

As the prepared tailors sell out, there will be a mad consumption of any bag making cloth. i.e. the prices of cloth with be a reflection of the prices of bags

Similar things should have happened with Worgens/Goblins for Cataclysm

I have build a chart based on the last expansion's inflation numbers. I have taken the Classic, BC and
Northrend cloth prices, turned them into indexes, and compared them
against the relevant indexes of prices since cataclysm's launch.

In looking back; I am looking for items that beat the Northrend index. Similarly, in the future, I will be looking for items that beat the Cataclysm index.

If bags were important then the cloth line will beat the underlying index. There may be other reasons why cloth sells or doesn't sell, but bags will be a large factor - especially initially.
You should be able to click on the picture for the full series, and on this link for the source document.

What does this graph tell me?

Northrend cloth (Frostweave) was the flavour of the month; leaving everything else behind. And it continues to do so. Wild swings certainly (and I would expect that given it's a single item on a single realm), but Frostweave cloth out performed everything I have looked at so far. Assuming Frostweave was turned into bags, this may have been a good bet for Cataclysm. I wouldn't know - I didnt sell them. None of the blogs were recommending them either - everyone that suggested bags promoted Netherweave. Do a google search. Bragging rights go to the blog that recommended Frostweave bags as the bag to sell before Cataclysm - and to the reader that finds that blog.

BC cloth (Netherweave) was and still is anaemic; badly underperformed vs the BC index. There simply was insufficient demand for this cloth to consume the available supply. I am sure that Netherweave bags sold at a profit, but no explosive demand can be seen. Not at the start of Cataclysm, and not now.

Classic cloth (Runecloth not really used for bags) outperformed Netherweave at every point. It didn't perform as well as the Wrath index, let alone Frostweave.

All the blogs knew netherweave bags would strike it rich. Only one blogger that I know of explicitly talked down Netherweave bags heading into Cataclysm. I provided some moral support but merely followed his advice. Looking at these numbers, this negativity was borne out by the chart above. Sure you could make gold; but there were better places to do it.

When we look at Mists of Pandaria, there will be a new bag in the mix - Embersilk.

Assuming that the transition to Mists of Pandaria (MOP) will be similar to the transition to Cataclysm, if you thought bags were a good bet (and even if you are not sure), Embersilk is likely to be a very good purchase, and frostweave might be OK. (Caveat emptor; I know my blog can influence prices; so I just bought a lot of embersilk cloth immediately before this post).

Doing this research was useful for me : I have hardened my resolve not to get involved in netherweave bags, I won't touch frostweave bags, but will look at embersilk in a more favourable light.

This post is part of a series on my stockpile for Mists of Pandaria, with thanks to Cold for his reminder that it is time to think about this topic via his April carnival topic.

Finally, I am flattered by the increase in readership (probably because I am writing something useful again). However, if the blogging community suggest things to look at; we are probably right. If anyone tells you about a sure fire bet; they could be wrong. If everyone tells you there is a gold IWIN button - then they are almost certainly wrong.

03 April 2012

I also stockpilied a lot of other things too - mostly a general mix of raw and partially processed Northrend mats. But today I am talking about stockpiling garbage.

I have the benefit of knowing what and why I wanted snowfall ink: I blogged specifically about it here and here. I was buying snowfall inks @ 2.5g each. With general northrend inflation being about 300%, that should put snowfall ink about 10g each. However the current mean price is 40g, so the inflation on this was over 1000%.

Runecloth, I also stockpiled. I don't have it written down, but my recollection was that I was buying runecloth for peanuts - I think about 5-10 silver each (marginally more than vendor). It is now listed for about 1.1g each (though Alliance Caelstras is closer to 25 silver). Again, about 1000% inflation. There were players pushing for 'the insane' title, and grinding out huge quantities of runecloth from re-running dire maul dungeons.

I was pleased with my investments - mostly. The runecloth sold well, but took too a little too much space for the return. However they were still a sound investment if you had empty bag spots.

Snowfall ink's were my best investment - the one I wish I put more away for, and wish I held onto those supplies for longer.

What was special about snowfall ink? It was a byproduct of making glyphs - which were very much still in demand. It was considered trash - useless and oversupplied. But it was still needed for levelling - and especially needed for northrend research.

Based on my last post, I will be creating stockpiles to bring out in 6 months. I will try not even to look at them in the meantime. Spare guild banks, unused alts banks will be filled.

The basis for my long term stockpiles for MoP: What is oversupplied as a byproduct of our current crafting processes? Zephyrite, Ocean Sapphire, Volatile Earth, Hypnotic dust, and to a lesser degree, Inferno ink come to mind. Those Cataclysm mats that, as a crafter, you would rather just not see and are vendoring.

These will still be needed later; and a power levelling JC doesn't care if they craft Zephyrite or Carnelians - their guild will tell them to use the cheapest available. Also recipee collectors will still be doing Cataclysm dailies.

I assume Volatile earth will likewise be used for levelling, it is selling for peanuts, and stacks very nicely.

There are no safe bets. There are good bets; but the moment people start talking about safe bets - well, you will be in for an ugly suprise.

For the record my previous came about over controversy from Breevok talking down Netherweave bags being a 'sure bet' for cataclysm's launch. For the record; Breevok did actually stockpile Netherweave bags for cataclysm, and they did sell at a profit. It was nice but not spectacular.

The title of this post is exaggeration; I will have some bags for sale, as well as a broad mix of items I think will be needed in the first weeks, and then items for sale about 6 months in.

There will be more posts about my stockpile plans and recommendations, and I will (try to) label them consistently. However, I will be spending as much time looking back as looking forward.

No fixed roster; Every week I can be found in /trade LFM <my current raid>. At least 4 toons got this achievement tonight; one of them had only ever done LFR.

Most players that have this, also raid mulitple nights/week. I
don't. I generally only raid once/week; having recently stepped up to 2
nights/week.

Normally, this means that I have been behind the curve for bosses. This is the first time I have downed a boss while they are current. Yes, there was a nerf (10%? 15%?), and it really was a 0.5% kill - We only had 2 toons standing and they looked sickly - I really thought it would be a wipe, we downed him.

I did gear up through LFR : they are quick to do and I did these in addition to my 1-2 nights raiding / week. The gear was enough. Before this I had 5 normal mode boss kills on my healer; but I had many mechanics down from my time in DS as tank.

If gear motivates you (and it does for many players), do LFR while you are getting anything, then join raid extensions. Do you really need another shot at Morchok normal, or are you going to disenchant his loot just like you did the last 10 Morchok kills?

Again, if boss kills motivate you (as it does for me), then if you want to kill a later boss, then kill a later boss by joining a raid extension.

And for crying out loud gem and enchant your gear. I understand that some of you have less gold than I do, but basic gems and enchants are not that expensive. There is no excuse not to at least be wearing cata uncommon gems. If you can't afford best enchants - put something useful on. Anything is better than unenchanted. This applies to your offspec gear too. If I see you in unenchanted ungemmed gear on the armory (even it's PVP) and I do check; then I am unlikely to take you.

For the casuals out there - who can only raid occaisonally: Take advantage of LFR for gear, and push for those later bosses.